SACRED MAGIC OF ABRAMELIN THE MAGE

Description

THE BOOK OF THE SACRED MAGIC OF
ABRAMELIN THE MAGE

AS DELIVERED BY ABRAHAM THE JEW
UNTO HIS SON LAMECH, A.D. 1458.

byS. L. Mac Gregor Mathers

Many years ago I heard of the existence of this manuscript from a celebrated occultist, since dead; and more recently my attention was again called to it by my personal friend, the well-known French author, lecturer, and poet, Jules Bois, whose attention has been for some time turned to occult subjects. My first-mentioned informant told me that it was known both to Bulwer Lytton and Eliphas Levi, that the former had based part of his description of the sage Rosicrucian Mejnour on that of Abra-Melin, while the account of the so-called observatory of Sir Philip Derval in the Strange Story was to an extent copied from and suggested by that of the magical oratory and terrace, given in the eleventh chapter of the second book of this present work.

Excerpt:

This rare and unique manuscript of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, from which the present work is translated, is a French translation from the original Hebrew of Abraham the Jew. It is in the style of script usual at about the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, and is apparently by the same hand as another MS. of the Magic of Picatrix also in the "Bibliothè
que de L'Arsenal". I know of no other existing copy or replica of this Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin, not even in the British Museum, whose enormous collection of occult manuscripts I have very thoroughly studied.

Neither have I ever heard by traditional report of the existence of any other copy . In giving it now to the public, I feel, therefore, that I am conferring a real benefit upon English and especially American students of occultism, by placing within their reach for the first time a magical work of such importance from the occult standpoint.

The manuscript is divided into three books, each with its separate title page, surrounded by an ornamental border of simple design, in red and black ink, and which is evidently not intended to be symbolical in the slightest degree, but is simply the work of a conscientious caligraphist wishing to give an appearance of cleanness and completeness to the title page.

The wording of each is the same: "Livre Premier (Second or Troisiè
me, as the case may be) de la Sacrèe Magie que Dieu donna à Moyse, Aaron, David, Salomon et á d'autres Saints Patriarches et Prophetes qui enseigne la vraye sapience Divine laissèe par Abraham à Lamech son Fils traduite de l'hèbreu 1458". I give the translated title at the commencement of each of the three books.

This system of Sacred Magic Abraham acknowledges to have received from the mage Abra-Melin; and claims to have himself personally and actually wrought most of the wonderful effects described in the third book, and many others besides.

Who then was this Abraham the Jew? It is possible, though there is no mention of this in the MS., that he was a descendant of that Abraham the Jew who wrote the celebrated alchemical work on twenty-one pages of bark or papyrus, which came into the hands of Nicholas Flamel, and by whose study the latter is said eventually to have attained the possession of the "stone of the wise". The only remains of the church of Saint Jacques de la Boucherie which exists at the present day, is the tower, which stands near the Place du Châtelet, about ten minutes' walk from the Bibliothè
que de l'Arsenal; and there is yet a street near this tower which bears the title of "Rue Nicolas Flamel," so that his memory still survives in Paris, together with that of the church close to which he lived, and to which, after the attainment of the Philosopher's Stone, he and his wife Pernelle caused a handsome peristyle to be erected.

From his own account, the author of the present work appears to have been born in A.D. 1362, and to have written this manuscript for his son, Lamech, in 1458, being then in his ninety-sixth year. That is to say, that he was the contemporary both of Nicholas Flamel and Pernelle, and also of the mystical Christian Rosenkreutz, the founder of the celebrated Rosicrucian Order or Fraternity in Europe. Like the latter, he appears to have been very early seized with the desire of obtaining magical knowledge; like him and Flamel, he left his home and travelled in search of the initiated wisdom; like them both, he returned to become a worker of wonders. At this period, it was almost universally believed that the secret knowledge was only really obtainable by those who were willing to quit their home and their country to undergo dangers and hardships in its quest; and this idea even obtains to an extent in the present day. The life of the late Madame Blavatsky is an example in point.

This period in which Abraham the Jew lived was one in which magic was almost universally believed in, and in which its professors were held in honour; Faust (who was probably also a contemporary of our author), Cornelius Agrippa, Sir Michael Scott, and many others I could name, are examples of this, not to mention the celebrated Dr. Dee in a later age. The history of this latter sage, his association with Sir Edward Kelly, and the part he took in the European politics of his time are too well known to need description here.